Author Interview: Adrian Stratta #travel Dusty Boots to Boardroom #newrelease

Adrian is a Home County Grammar School kid who attended Sheffield University in the mid-1980s. He has lived in a Hampshire village for over 30 years with his wife Catherine, although they have also worked and lived abroad during this time. Adrian spent 17 years within the Parachute Regiment, leaving with an MBA and MoD experience.

Dusty Boots to Boardroom: Follow Your Dreams is Adrian’s first book – out TODAY!

Tell us a little about yourself. (How did you get started writing? What do you do when you’re not writing?)

Writing – I don’t see myself as a writer (yet! Haha). The book was the result of a major trip that Catherine (my wife) and I undertook in 2002 to realise our dreams. We followed our dream, but when we got home, we both knuckled down to work again. For 20 years, I have served as an interim executive, helping to turn around and restructure businesses. However, during the COVID lockdown, I was working in the aviation sector (or rather not working), so I wrote the book then and have tinkered with it (cathartically) since.

Catherine was talking about resilience and helping people in her new business, which gave me the license to start talking about our trip.

What genre is your book, and what is it about?

Is it a love story or a tragedy?

It’s about our relationship, following our dream of trans African travel.

It follows the snakes and ladders of our travel home.

We had been enjoying safari holidays as a way to reconnect, since our honeymoon in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana.

Although it is a travelogue, it is more about the amazing people (and events – rolling our first vehicle; getting held up at gunpoint in the Darfur war!); the great and the good, ex military friends and otherwise), ex mercenary Simon Mann (who offered to loan us his Range Rover – thankfully he never offered me a job on his Wonga debacle) and the locals ‘making Africa happen’.

Writing in 2020, twenty years later, it provides great reflection; today’s book is considerably stronger and richer for the light and dark, as Simon Reeve would say! We are constantly amazed at the African connections to our Hampshire village; so much so that we set up the Holybourne Sand Club, principally because local GP Christopher Everett (and five other med students) rotated around the Congo in 1958, and we crossed the Sahara on their route 45 years later! Who knew? We have their diary, so compare their trip to ours and events today – the reflection!

There are many subplots; a core one is my career change, from 20 years as a paratrooper to what? I had an MBA and leadership experience, but was there really a need for a parachute overhead assault on the City of London? I follow the military theme, discussing events from my own experience or those of my regiment as we pass them, for example, in Algeria and Tunisia, including the formation of the Regiment – the Red Devils!

And – the ‘what do we do when we get home’, boardroom part? I discuss the difference in how the military leader talks about the Team, as opposed to the personal ambition of the commercial mind.

And – there are Catherine’s revelations in the Epilogue – I shall not spoil the surprise!

What or who inspired you to write this book?

The inspiration came directly from our trip; there is a story to be told! The trip came about when we were sitting in the Serengeti (as you do) drinking sundowners on a rock, I mused to Catherine, ‘wouldn’t it be lovely to drive from London to Cape Town if I leave the army’. I mused; Catherine took it as gospel – we are doing this! Follow your dreams.

What writing advice do you have for other aspiring authors?

Just do it! I guess I have done it all wrong – I wrote what I wanted and then expected it to be published. Plan who your audience is and what they’d like to hear, and craft the book and publishing together, so you don’t get to the end of the writing and wonder what’s next.

What do you enjoy most about writing and why?

It is very freeing – as I write, I find my mind wandering back to the trip and places.

I often woke in the night having rewritten passages in my mind, but in the cold light of day, I couldn’t recall a thing. Then it would just flow out of me?

List three interesting facts about yourself.

I have lived two lives – military and commercial

I am not brave

I have to manage Catherine – doubly brave and go getting; therein lies the challenge – (haha!)

What is your least favourite part of the publishing/writing process, and how do you manage this?

I always thought the challenge would be writing the book – I am not a natural wordsmith. But that is simple compared to navigating the publishing and marketing world. Let me traverse the Sahara any day.

What can readers who enjoy your book do to help make it successful?

Talk about it, spread the word? If you too want to break free – follow your dreams, we show you how. After all, most journeys are in the mind.

What is your next project?

So many ideas – most of all supporting Catherine’s new venture to help coach individuals with mental illness – she had half a dozen books in her head!